1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic commerce (e-commerce) and, more particularly to electronically sharing technical information among suppliers, manufacturers and customers of a particular product development chain.
2. Background Description
In any large industry, such as the food industry, manufacturers purchase raw materials from suppliers, process the raw material to produce goods and, sell finished goods to customers. At each stage during production, volumes of data may be generated for different products, e.g., how to solve a particular manufacturing problem or, the best way to store the product. Specifications may be generated for finished products and advance sheets may be available for planned products. Since one manufacturer's finished product may be the next manufacturer's raw material, passing some or all information collected on the product may be important to both parties.
Further, audits may be required to be done on one product several times. Each audit may be at considerable expense to the party being audited. Typically, audit results are not generally available.
Currently, the food industry does not have a centralized repository that provides an all-encompassing platform for sharing technical information. This omission has created inefficiencies within the food industry because of redundancy and duplication of effort in the management and use of food-related technical information.
Thus, there is a need for providing suppliers, manufacturers and customers of a particular industry, such as the food industry, with a tool for managing and sharing specifications and other information in a standardized format.